Human Resources Online/29 November 2017

United Overseas Bank (UOB) has begun the first phase of its programme to strengthen the digital capabilities of its employees in Singapore, according to a media release. This Professional Conversion Programme (PCP) is an addition to UOB’s existing suite of technology-based training programmes.

As part of this, customer-facing employees will undergo the training programme to deepen their digital skills in areas such as design thinking, customer journey design, channel management, and scenario analysis and planning.

UOB’s 900 employees from its network of branches island-wide are the first to be enrolled in the programme.

Each course will be conducted through classroom learning, workshops and on-the-job training, and will take between three and 12 months for the employees to complete.

The modular programme, which also covers digital marketing, social media engagement and data analytics, will be integrated into UOB’s training programme.

Jenny Wong, head of group human resources, UOB, said, “UOB prioritises continuous training and development for our people to ensure their professional growth and to encourage more enterprising thinking. Last year alone, UOB invested $20 million in training and development programmes for our people.”

“Given the influence of technology in shaping the lives and preferences of our customers, we must ensure our people are equipped with the relevant skillsets and agile mindsets for the future. With broader minds and more informed thinking, they will also find their roles more fulfilling through the value they see they create,” she adds.

The PCP was developed in collaboration with Workforce Singapore (WSG), the Monetary Authority of Singapore and The Institute of Banking and Finance.

Tan Choon Shian, chief executive of WSG commented: “We are encouraged that UOB and other local banks are investing strongly in continuous training and upgrading of staff to enable them to be relevant and take on higher value jobs.

News Source: Human Resources Online

Rigzone/28 November 2017

HOUSTON, Nov 28 (Reuters) – Shale oil engineer Oscar Portillo spends his days drilling as many as five wells at once – without ever setting foot on a rig.

Part of a team working to cut the cost of drilling a new shale well by a third, Portillo works from a Royal Dutch Shell Plc office in suburban Houston, his eyes darting among 13 monitors flashing data on speed, temperature and other metrics as he helps control rigs more than 500 miles (805 km) away in the Permian Basin, the largest U.S. oilfield.

For the last decade, smaller oil companies have led the way in shale technology, slashing costs by as much as half with breakthroughs such as horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracking that turned the United States into the world’s fastest-growing energy exporter.

Now, oil majors that were slow to seize on shale are seeking further efficiencies by adapting technologies for highly automated offshore operations to shale and pursuing advances in digitalization that have reshaped industries from auto manufacturing to retail.

If they are successful, the U.S. oil industry’s ability to bring more wells to production at lower cost could amp up future output and company profits. The firms could also frustrate the ongoing effort by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to drain a global oil glut.

“We’re bringing science into the art of drilling wells,” Portillo said.

The technological push comes amid worries that U.S. shale gains are slowing as investors press for higher financial returns. Many investors want producers to restrain spending and focus on generating higher returns, not volume, prompting some to pull back on drilling.

Production at a majority of publicly traded shale producers rose just 1.3 percent over the first three quarters this year, according to Morgan Stanley.

But many U.S. shale producers vowed during third quarter earnings disclosures to deliver higher returns through technology, with many forecasting aggressive output hikes into 2018.

Chevron Corp is using drones equipped with thermal imaging to detect leaks in oil tanks and pipelines across its shale fields, avoiding traditional ground inspections and lengthy shutdowns.

Ryan Lance, chief executive of ConocoPhillips – the largest U.S. independent oil and gas producer – sees ample opportunity to boost both profits and output. Conoco also oversees remote drilling operations in a similar way to Shell.

“The people that don’t have shale in their portfolios don’t understand it, frankly,” Lance said in an interview. “They think it’s going to go away quickly because of the high decline rates, or that the resource is not nearly that substantial. They’re wrong on both counts.”

Shell, in an initiative called “iShale,” has marshaled technology from a dozen oilfield suppliers, including devices from subsea specialist TechnipFMC Plc that separate fracking sand from oil and well-control software from Emerson Electric Co, to bring more automation and data analysis to shale operations.

One idea borrowed from deepwater projects is using sensors to automatically adjust well flows and control separators that divvy natural gas, oil and water. Today, these subsea systems are expensive because they are built to operate at the extreme pressures and temperatures found miles under the ocean’s surface.

Shell’s initiative aims to create cheaper versions for onshore production by incorporating low-cost sensors similar to those in Apple Inc’s Watch, eliminating the need for workers to visit thousands of shale drilling rigs to read gauges and manually adjust valves. Shell envisions shale wells that predict when parts are near mechanical failure and schedule repairs automatically.

By next year, the producer wants to begin remote fracking of wells, putting workers in one place to oversee several projects. It also would add solar panels and more powerful batteries to well sites to reduce electricity and diesel costs.

Oil firms currently spend about $5.9 million to drill a new shale well, according to consultancy Rystad Energy. Shell expects to chop that cost to less than $4 million apiece by the end of the decade.

“There is still very little automation,” said Amir Gerges, head of Shell’s Permian operations. “We haven’t scratched the surface.”

Technology And Geology

Much of the new technology is focused on where rather than how to drill.

“There is no amount of technology that can improve bad geology,” said Mark Papa, CEO of shale producer Centennial Resource Development Inc

Anadarko Petroleum, Statoil and others are using DNA sequencing to pinpoint high potential areas, collecting DNA from microbes in oil to search for the same DNA in rock samples. ConocoPhillip’s MRI techniques also borrow from medical advances.

ConocoPhillips next year will start using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to analyze Permian rock samples and find the best drilling locations, a technique the company first developed for its Alaskan offshore operations.

EOG Resources Inc last year began using a detailed analysis of the oil quality of its fields. The analysis, designed by Houston start-up Premier Oilfield Laboratories, helps to speed decisions on fracking locations and avoid less productive sites.

Premier has reduced the time needed to analyze geochemical data to find oil reserves from days or weeks to seconds. Such efficiencies serve two purposes, said Nathan Ganser, Premier’s director of geochemical services.

“It’s not only removing costs that are superfluous,” he said. “It’s boosting production.”

News Source: Rigzone

Singapore Business Review/28 November 2017

Two are in the Confirmed List, whilst the two others are on the Reserve List.

JTC launched tenders for two sites at Tampines North Drive 3 and Tuas South Link 3, as well as Woodlands Height and Woodlands Industrial Park E7/E8 under the second half of its 2017 Industrial Government Land Sales (IGLS) Programme.

According to a press release, this is the sixth and seventh out of eight Confirmed List sites and the fourth and fifth out of six Reserve List sites for the second half of 2017.

Under the Reserve List system, a land parcel will only be released for sale if it receives an offer of a minimum price that is acceptable to the government or when there is sufficient market interest for the site.

The 0.48 ha site at Tampines North Drive 3 (Plot 2) and 0.60 ha site at Tuas South Link 3 (Plot 27) are zoned for Business-2 development and have a 20-year tenure with a maximum permissible gross plot ratio of 2.5 and 1.4, respectively.

The 1.61 ha site at Woodlands Height is zoned for Business-1 development with a 30-year tenure and a maximum gross plot ratio of 2.5, whilst the 0.88 ha site at Woodlands Industrial Park E7/E8 is zoned for Business-2 development with a 20-year tenure and a maximum gross plot ratio of 2.5.

The tender closes on 23 January 2018 at 11 a.m.

News Source: Singapore Business Review

Rigzone/28 November 2017

CNOOC Limited has confirmed that the Weizhou 12-2 oil field phase II project, located in the Beibu Gulf in the South China Sea, has commenced production.

The project is expected to reach its designed peak output of approximately 11,800 barrels of crude oil per day in 2018. Currently, seven wells are producing approximately 6,400 bopd.

Weizhou 12-2 phase II fully utilized the existing facilities of the Weizhou 12-2 oil field, in addition to building an extra wellhead platform.

CNOOC revealed last month that the company achieved a total net production of 116.2 million barrels of oil equivalent in the third quarter, representing a decrease of 1.3 percent year-on-year.

Production from offshore China decreased 2.4 percent YoY to 73.8 million barrels of oil equivalent, mainly due to the production decline of producing fields.

News Source: Rigzone

Rigzone/28 November 2017

SINGAPORE/BANGKOK, Nov 28 (Reuters) – Thailand’s largest refiner Thai Oil PCL will stop producing fuel oil from 2022 once it completes a $4-billion upgrade that will boost output of clean fuels, officials said.

The project is part of a growing trend among global refiners to produce more high-quality oil products instead of the heavy polluting fuel oil. Shippers, the biggest user of fuel oil, will likely drop it after 2020 to meet requirements set by the International Maritime Organization.

The upgrade will bring Thai Oil’s capacity closer to Royal Dutch Shell’s 500,000-bpd Bukom complex in Singapore, the oil major’s biggest wholly-owned plant, while sharpening the Thai refiner’s competitive edge as brand-new complexes come online in Malaysia and Vietnam, analysts said.

“Competition in the cleaner, low-sulphur fuel space is set to balloon over the coming years, not least due to competition from established refiners in the region as well as completion of upgrades at many of China’s state-owned facilities,” said Peter Lee, oil and gas analyst at BMI Research.

Thai Oil plans to increase its refining capacity by 45 percent to 400,000 barrels per day in the next five years to turn “fuel oil into more valuable low-sulphur products that will help meet growing demand in the region”, its investors relations officials said in an e-mail.

The upgrade is also “designed to increase the refiner’s flexibility to process a wider array of heavier, less expensive crudes”, they said.

Thai Oil plans to install a new crude distillation unit (CDU) with capacity of 200,000-220,000 bpd, the officials said, and will scrap two existing units with combined capacity of 100,000 bpd.

Of the refinery’s proposed 400,000-bpd fuel output, 70-75 percent will be diesel and jet fuel, up from 56 percent currently, while gasoline and naphtha production will remain at 20-25 percent, they said.

Thai Oil has started a year-long bidding process for engineering, procurement and construction contractors and expects to make a final investment decision by the third quarter of 2018, officials said. Construction will take four years, they said.

Fellow refiner Bangchak Petroleum PCL also plans to debottleneck its refinery by 2020 so that it can run at 130,000-bpd, up 20,000 bpd from current levels, and increase its output of light and middle distillates. The company declined to disclose the project’s cost.

Both refiners will have to target the export market as “the Thai refining sector remains saturated while the pace of domestic consumption is set to be moderate at best,” BMI’s Lee said.

News Source: Rigzone

Rigzone/27 November 2017

CALGARY, Alberta, Nov 27 (Reuters) – The Keystone crude oil pipeline will restart at reduced pressure on Tuesday, TransCanada Corp said, nearly two weeks after closing the line after it leaked 5,000 barrels of crude in rural South Dakota.

Calgary-based TransCanada shut down the 590,000 barrel-per-day pipeline, one of Canada’s main crude export routes linking Alberta’s oil fields to U.S. refineries, on Nov. 16. The company is still cleaning up the spill and investigating the cause.

TransCanada said on Monday the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) reviewed its repair and restart plans. It said it will start operating the pipeline at reduced pressure, and gradually boost the volume of crude moving through.

TransCanada did not specify what the reduced pressure would be or when the pipeline would return to full capacity. PHMSA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“We are communicating plans to our customers and will continue working closely with them as we begin to return to normal operating conditions,” TransCanada said in a statement.

In its most recent update, TransCanada said it has so far cleaned up 1,065 barrels of oil.

The cleanup “is going as fast as we would hope, they are working 24 hours a day,” said Brian Walsh, environmental scientist manager with the South Dakota Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

Keystone has leaked substantially more oil, and more often, in the United States than the company indicated to regulators in risk assessments before operations began in 2010, according to documents reviewed by Reuters.

The Keystone outage roiled crude oil prices on both sides of the border as market players anticipated a glut of crude building up in Alberta while inventories fell in the U.S. futures trading hub of Cushing, Oklahoma.

The West Texas Intermediate (WTI) prompt spread <CLc1-CLc2> widened to a session low of negative 10 cents on news of the pipeline returning to service. Traders see the spread as an indicator for supply at Cushing.

The discount on Western Canada Select heavy blend crude for December delivery in Hardisty, Alberta, narrowed in thin trade to $17.90 a barrel below U.S. crude, according to Shorcan Energy brokers. On Friday December WCS settled at $21.50 a barrel under the U.S. benchmark.

The Keystone spill in South Dakota came days before neighboring Nebraska approved a route for TransCanada’s planned Keystone XL pipeline, but the approved route differed from the company’s preferred path. TransCanada has asked the state to reconsider, according to a filing posted on the Nebraska Public Service Commission website on Monday.

A company spokesman said TransCanada is seeking a “clarification” on the Nov. 20 decision, but did not provide further details.

On Saturday, landowners opposed to the pipeline responded to TransCanada’s request with their own motion seeking oral arguments on the issue.

A PSC spokesperson said the body has 60 days to respond to TransCanada’s motion.

News Source: Rigzone

CNBC/27 November 2017

TransCanada‘s existing Keystone pipeline has leaked substantially more oil, and more often, in the United States than indicated in risk assessments the company provided to regulators before the project began operating in 2010, according to documents reviewed by Reuters.

The Canadian company is now seeking to expand the pipeline system linking Alberta’s oil fields to U.S. refineries with its proposed Keystone XL project, which has U.S. President Donald Trump‘s backing.

The existing 2,147-mile (3,455 km) Keystone system from Hardisty, Alberta, to the Texas coast has had three significant leaks in the United States since it began operating in 2010, including a 5,000-barrel spill this month in rural South Dakota, and two others, each about 400 barrels, in South Dakota in 2016 and North Dakota in 2011.

Before constructing the pipeline, TransCanada provided a spill risk assessment to regulators that estimated the chance of a leak of more than 50 barrels to be “not more than once every seven to 11 years over the entire length of the pipeline in the United States,” according to its South Dakota operating permit.

For South Dakota alone, where the line has leaked twice, the estimate was for a “spill no more than once every 41 years.”

The spill risk analysis was conducted by global risk management company DNV GL. A spokesman for DNV did not respond to a request for comment.

Members of South Dakota’s Public Utilities Commission told Reuters last week they could revoke TransCanada’s operating permit if an initial probe of last week’s spill shows it violated the terms of the license.

Those terms include requirements for standards for construction, regular inspections of pipeline infrastructure, and other environmental safeguards.

“They testified that this is going to be a state-of-the-art pipeline,” said one of the commissioners, Gary Hanson. “We want to know the pipeline is going to operate in a fashion that is safe and reliable. So far it’s not going well.”

TransCanada shut a section of the line while it cleans up the leak, which occurred near the town of Aberdeen on Nov. 16. An official did not respond to a request for comment.

The spill took place days before regulators in neighboring Nebraska approved a route for TransCanada’s proposed Keystone XL pipeline through the state, lifting the last major regulatory hurdle for the expansion that has been delayed for years by environmental opposition.

Trump handed TransCanada a presidential permit for Keystone XL in March, reversing former President Barack Obama‘s decision to reject the line on economic and environmental grounds, saying that it would create jobs and boost national security.

TransCanada’s spill analysis for Keystone XL, which would cross Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska, estimates 2.2 leaks per decade with half of those at volumes of 3 barrels or less. It estimated that spills exceeding 1,000 barrels would occur at a rate of once per century.

News Source: CNBC

CNBC/26 November 2017

A lack of investment in oil projects will likely come back to bite the energy market, the CEO of one of the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds told CNBC.

“When you look at the investments in exploration projects all over the world … It has been depleted, and I believe we will see the results of that in the coming years,” Mubadala CEO Khaldoon Al Mubarak told CNBC. Abu Dhabi-based Mubadala has around $125 billion of assets under management and specializes in buyout investments.

The price of oil tumbled from $120 a barrel in June 2014 due to weak demand, a strong dollar and booming U.S. shale production. OPEC‘s reluctance to cut output was also seen as a key reason behind the fall. But the oil cartel and other crude-producing nations moved to curb production in late 2016. Oil and gas firms worldwide have subsequently cut their share in investment given the subdued market prices.

“It has been challenging from one perspective dealing with a lower oil price environment but at the same time, very opportunistic because it helped us move faster down the diversification strategy,” Mubadala’s Al Mubarak said.

‘Bread and butter’ of the economy

News Source: CNBC

Reuters/23 November 2017

TORONTO/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – A newspaper advertisement for an Uber Technologies Inc stock sale was juxtaposed on Wednesday with a report that the ride-service provider had covered up a data hack – something of a metaphor for Uber, a company with boundless investor interest, but whose penchant for rule-breaking has led to a series of scandals.

The stock sale advertised in the New York Times will enable Uber [UBER.UL] investors to sell their shares to Japanese investor SoftBank, a critical deal for the company whose problems included building software to spy on competitors and to evade regulators and being investigated in Asia for paying bribes.

Uber on Tuesday said that it had paid hackers $100,000 to destroy data on more than 57 million customers and drivers that was stolen from the company – and decided under the previous CEO Travis Kalanick not to report the matter to victims or authorities. Uber was first hacked in October 2016 and discovered the data breach the following month.

Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi, who took the helm in August with the mission of turning around the company and overhauling its culture, acknowledged in a blog that Uber had erred in its handling of the breach. (ubr.to/2AmxlQt)

The timing of the disclosure could hardly have been worse.

The company is trying to complete a deal with SoftBank Group Corp (9984.T) in which the Japanese firm would invest as much as $10 billion for at least 14 percent of the company, mostly by buying out existing shareholders. SoftBank is advertising to find shareholders who want to sell.

Uber last month announced a preliminary deal for the SoftBank investment.

One question is whether SoftBank will now try to alter the price of the deal. One source familiar with the matter said SoftBank is planning to stick to its agreement to invest in Uber but may seek better terms. SoftBank has not yet made a final decision on whether to renegotiate, the source said.

Another question is the future of Kalanick, the co-founder who led Uber to becoming a global powerhouse but did so with aggressive and controversial tactics. He was forced out by investors in June who feared his leadership style would damage the company, although he stayed on the board and remains a significant shareholder.

A bitter battle among investors over how to resolve Uber’s problems led to a lawsuit by early investor Benchmark, which sought to oust Kalanick from any role. But a settlement was reached earlier this month to pave the way for the SoftBank deal, with Kalanick retaining his board seat and other rights.

Kalanick was made aware of the hack last November and was aware of the $100,000 payment, according to a person close to the matter. Kalanick has declined to comment. Uber did not respond to questions from Reuters on Wednesday.

MULTIPLE INVESTIGATIONS, LAWSUITS

The scope of the repercussions Uber will face for the October 2016 data breach began to take shape Wednesday with governments around the world opening investigations.

Authorities in Britain, Australia and the Philippines said they would investigate Uber’s response to the data breach. London’s transport regulator, which has been in discussions with Uber after stripping it of its license to operate, said it was pressing Uber for details.

Canada’s privacy watchdog said that it had asked Uber for details on the breach, though it had not launched a formal investigation.

Attorneys general offices in at least six U.S. states along with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) have announced they are looking into the matter. Some states are likely to go after Uber for breaking laws on data breach notification within a reasonable period of time.

At least two class action lawsuits have been filed against the company in the United States for failing to disclose the data breaches and causing potential harm to consumers.

Uber said that it has been in touch with the FTC and several states to discuss a hack and pledged to cooperate.

Legal experts said the company is likely to face limited financial fallout from data-breach lawsuits. Uber might succeed in squelching them outright because its agreements with both customers and drivers call for mandatory arbitration of disputes.

Uber fired its chief security officer, Joe Sullivan, and a deputy, Craig Clark, over their role in handling the hack.

The board of directors had commissioned an investigation into Sullivan and his team, which is how the breach was discovered. The board committee concluded that neither Kalanick nor Salle Yoo, who was general counsel at the time, had been consulted in the company’s response to the breach, according to a second person familiar with the matter.

It is unclear what the board of directors knew, if anything. Multiple board members did not respond to requests for comment.

“The scope of this breach is something the Uber board should have been briefed about and consulted on at the very least,” said Cynthia Clark, an associate professor of management at Bentley University. “It’s a monitoring issue and one of strategy and reputation.”

Clark said that these sorts of risks could affect Uber’s IPO, which the board has agreed will take place in 2019.

The company has begun overhauling its security practices with help from Matt Olsen, former general counsel of the U.S. National Security Agency and director of the National Counterterrorism Center, CEO Khosrwoshahi said.

Uber in August settled with the FTC after the regulator found the company failed to protect the personal information of passengers and drivers, an agreement that requires 20 years of regular auditing of Uber’s data.

After this week’s disclosures, Uber can expect “more audits and more people inside of the company” from regulators, said cyber security attorney Steven Rubin.

News Source: Reuters

INC Asean/22 November 2017

In 2014 Mike Seay received a promotional email from office supplies company OfficeMax. The letter was addressed to “Mike Seay, Daughter Killed in Car Crash.” In fact, Seay’s 17-year-old daughter had died in a car crash the previous year. The marketing misstep had catastrophic brand consequences for OfficeMax. Dozens of media outlets, from Forbes to the Wall Street Journal to the Los Angeles Times to local television stations covered the mix up, which OfficeMax blamed on a data broker for merging the wrong information fields.

Intelligence, and more specifically artificial intelligence, will disrupt many industries and ways we do business. For example, old ways of doing things, such as the venerable CAPTCHA online security tool, are already close to being blown up by AI systems that learn on their own. Relatively inefficient and messy, themarketing field seems ripe for AI disruption. But technology, left to its own devices, can make a mess quickly.

The OfficeMax incident is a stark reminder of what can go wrong when humans are completely removed or unable to oversee marketing processes or any other process that pushes information into the hands of potential users or consumers. Google also learned this the hard way when it’s automated image identification system started labeling African-Americans as gorillas. And Vanguard, the highly respected and decidedly apolitical brokerage, was shocked to find that AI-driven advertising networks had placed its ads on strongly conservative news site Breitbart and other highly politicized online destinations.

The end goal is understandable and even laudable. Systems will automate marketing to better target messages and better interest potential customers. Marketing-centric artificial intelligence tools aimed at marketers will drive lightning-fast decisions based on algorithm. Those decision processes are designed to be several steps removed from humans.

A lot of the time, that’s just fine. Make no mistake — AI systems can see patterns that humans cannot easily see. They can tell us what specific terms work better, and how to get a 5% increase in traffic or response through multi-variate testing and A/B tests on just about anything that you can digitize.

If you are ready to go down that route and cede full control of your brand and your message to AI, then you probably should also think through what can go wrong in order to plan for disaster. In the case of Google, before releasing an image recognition tool to the world, it probably would have made more sense to run a widescale private beta (maybe they did this – but it didn’t seem to work). In the case of OfficeMax, a simple data merge caused the problem but for a not considerable sum of money the company could have run its lists by human QA checkers in Asia or set up some jobs on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk to at least screen for any potential problems.

The reality that all marketers must reconcile to and understand is simple. Most AI lacks nearly all common sense, and that includes a sense of morals, societal norms and decency. So trusting AI to talk to your customers and your users unreservedly is the equivalent of allowing an amoral actor to take over your marketing department. Be somewhat afraid. But more importantly, be ready.

News Source: INC Asean